F. Scott Fitzgerald was an American author novels and short stories. He was born on September 24, 1896 and died on December 21, 1940 due to his alcohol abuse. F. Scott Fitzgerald was born to the parents of Edward and Mary McQuillan. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American authors of the twentieth century. He finished four novels, but the fifth novel of his was published posthumously. Most of his work included incidents from his own life. He would write about what he saw throughout his life. Paris in the nineteen twenties proved the most influential. Like professional authors at the time, “Fitzgerald supplemented his income by writing short stories for the magazine Esquire.”(ProQuest) Although Fitzgerald’s passion lay in writing novels, only his first novel sold well enough to support the opulent lifestyle that he had. Fitzgerald’s work has inspired writers ever since he published his first article. He left a great legacy following his death. Fitzgerald had been an alcoholic since his college days, and became notorious during the nineteen twenties for extraordinarily heavy drinking; leaving him in poor health by the late nineteen thirties “I was drunk for many years, and then I died.”(F. Scott Fitzgerald) His first novel’s success made him
famous, and he marries the woman of his dreams, but he later descended into drinking and his wife had a mental breakdown. Following the unsuccessful Tender is the Night; Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood and became a scriptwriter. He died of a heart attack in nineteen forty, at age forty-four, his last novel only half completed. Two of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories “The Lost Decade” and “Babylon Revisited” focus mainly on damaged men, hard drinkers and men struggling with li...
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... the past and the present” (M. J. Bruccoli). All of the characters portray someone who is not actually in the present. They keep focusing on the past instead of what is ahead of them.
Works Cited
A., C. "The Lost Decade: Short Stories From Esquire, 1936-1941." Contemporary Review 291.1693 (2009): 262-263. Literary Reference Center. Web. 1 Apr. 2014.
Fitzgerald , F. Scott . "Babylon Revisited." Esquire . 01 1935: n. page. Web. 21 Mar. 2014.
Fitzgerald , F. Scott . "The Lost Decade ." Esquire . 12 1939: n. page. Web. 20 Mar. 2014.
"Literary Criticism: F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Lost Decade" ." DaRK PaRTY ReVIEW. Literate Blather , 17 July 2006. Web. 18 Apr. 2014. <>.
“ProQuest. The Financial Times Limited, 26 06 2004. Web. 21 Mar 2014.
The Collected Writings (1991), ed. by M. J. Bruccoli; biography by N. Milford (1970); study by S. Mayfield (1971).
F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “I am not a great man, but sometimes I think the impersonal and objective quality of my talent, and the sacrifices of it, in pieces, to preserve its essential value has some sort of epic grandeur” (“F. Scott Fitzgerald” St. James). Fitzgerald had heavy drinking problems and faced many financial failures throughout his life of writing but has proved to be gifted in many ways of writing. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was a short story writer, an essayist, and a novelist that was most famous during the Jazz Age of the 1920s and the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Scott Fitzgerald chose to maintain a lifestyle that he could not sustain and constantly put him in debt. Instead of finding true love through richer or poorer, he chose to love a woman who only married him because his first novel was successful. Fitzgerald died at 44 years old and alone. Jay Gatsby as died young and alone while still loving a woman who didn’t love him. Dexter Green was the only smart one out of the 3 men who gave up loving the woman of his dreams. After joining the military, he came back to see Judy’s beauty faded, and she was married to a man with money. Dexter cried when he finally understood that he had to also cast aside "the country of illusion, of youth, of the richness of life" (Fitzgerald, 1922) that used to inspire him so
Mizener, Arthur, ed. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was born September 24th, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota. His first novel's achievement made him well-known and allowed him to marry Zelda, but he later derived into drinking while his wife had developed many mental problems. Right after the “failed” Tender is the Night, Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood to become a scriptwriter. He died at the age of 44 of a heart attack in 1940, his final novel only half way completed.
Merriman, C. D. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." The Literature Network. Jalic Inc., 2007. Web. 17 Jan. 2014.
Certain authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, wanted to reflect the horrors that the world had experienced not a decade ago. In 1914, one of the most destructive and pointless wars in history plagued the world: World War I. This war destroyed a whole generation of young men, something one would refer to as the “Lost Generation”. Modernism was a time that allowed the barbarity of the war to simmer down and eventually, disappear altogether. One such author that thrived in this period was F. Scott Fitzgerald, a young poet and author who considered himself the best of his time. One could say that this self-absorption was what fueled his drive to be the most famous modernist the world had seen. As The New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean mentions in her literary summary of Fitzgerald’s works, “I didn’t know till fifteen that there was anyone in the world except me, and it cost me plenty” (Orlean xi). One of the key factors that influenced and shaped Fitzgerald’s writing was World War I, with one of his most famous novels, This Side Of Paradise, being published directly after the war in 1920. Yet his most famous writing was the book, The Great Gatsby, a novel about striving to achieve the American dream, except finding out when succeeding that this dream was not a desire at all. Fitzgerald himself lived a life full of partying and traveling the world. According to the Norton Anthology of American Literature, “In the 1920’s and 1930’s F. Scott Fitzgerald was equally equally famous as a writer and as a celebrity author whose lifestyle seemed to symbolize the two decades; in the 1920’s he stood for all-night partying, drinking, and the pursuit of pleasure while in the 1930’s he stood for the gloomy aftermath of excess” (Baym 2124). A fur...
By the end of World War I, many American authors were ready to change their ways and views on writing. Authors are tired of tradition and limitations. One of these writers was F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was a participant in the wild parties with bootleg liquor, but he was also a critic of this time. His book, The Great Gatsby is an excellent example of modernist literature, through its use of implied themes and fragmented storyline.
Doreski, C. K. "Fitzgerald, F. Scott 1896—1940." American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies, Retrospective Supplement 1. Ed. A. Walton Litz and Molly Weigel. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998. 97-120. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 14 Jan. 2014.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "Babylon Revisited." In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume II. Edited by Paul Lauter et al. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1991: 1471-1485.
F. Scott Fitzgerald lived a short life of only forty-four years. He underwent many struggles during his lifetime, including alcoholism and the marital psychological issues with his ill wife. Although he experienced many rough patches throughout his lifetime, Fitzgerald was able to become one of the most well known American Authors of the 20th century. Fitzgerald was also able to be known as one of the most prominent novelists and short story writers of the 20th century. During his life time, Fitzgerald would have never dreamt of the importance his posthumous life has on the world today. He truly is the Spokesperson of the Jazz Age.
Bewley, Marius. "Scott Fitzgerald's Criticism of America." Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Great Gatsby. Ed. Ernest Lockridge. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968. 37-53.
Sutton, Brian. "Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby." Explicator 59.1 (Fall 2000): 37-39. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Linda Pavlovski. Vol. 157. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Feb. 2011.
Sutton, Brian. "Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby." Explicator 59.1 (Fall 2000): 37-39. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Linda Pavlovski. Vol. 157. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 15 Jan. 2014.
When F. Scott Fitzgerald died, he deemed himself a failure, but in the public eye, he was known as one of the best American writers of the 20th century. Scott was born on September 24, 1896 to an upper-middle-class family. In the “Importance of F. Scott Fitzgerald,” by Gail B. Stewart, it states that at the age of 44, F. Scott Fitzgerald died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940. Fitzgerald was a victim to severe alcoholism and depression and his wife, Zelda, had several mental breakdowns. Throughout his life, F. Scott Fitzgerald faced many ups and downs. but all in all, he has influenced the lives of many people.
In writing this book, commonly refered to as the “Great American Novel”, F. Scott Fitzgerald achieved in showing future generations what the early twenties were like, and the kinds of people that lived then. He did this in a beautifully written novel with in-depth characters, a captivating plot, and a wonderful sense of the time period.